Adventures of the Fellowship of the University of Adventuring School of Technology College

When a girl has a heart of stone, there’s only one way to melt it. Just add Ice.

Dealing with the blue

Or Dire 1v1's a Puddle;

12

MAR/15

Kiera takes the spiked bell out of Jett’s mouth. The adventures leave the room, wanting to get away from the flesh pillars. After resting, the decide it’s time to take the four artifacts and place them on the runes.

They observe the room carefully, and come up with a plan. Aelar and Ulmo go into one room with the book. Zanvard and Dire go into a different room with the dagger. Kiera and Jett stand in the room with the different colored pools with the bell. Aelar and Ulmo urge Derp to go into the last room with the mask, after ensuring that he can, in fact, count to three. “Please don’t leave me alone,” Derp says, reluctant to go into the last room. Presumably because he keeps getting knocked unconscious every battle, and the ghosts did not make it seem like good things happen once the artifacts are placed.

Everyone being in their rooms, Aelar counts to three. Aelar, Kiera and Dire all place their items. And nothing happens. “Ulmo, go check on Derp.” Ulmo finds that Derp is still wearing the mask. “Why are you still wearing the mask?” He shouts. To which Derp responds, “I forgot what I was supposed to do.”

They count to 3 again, and this time everyone places their items successfully. The moment that the items are placed, all of the doors in the area slam open. They all hear a roar coming from the well that they spent so long inspecting earlier. The adventurers that are able to see out of the rooms they are in, see a young green dragon swoop out of the well, roaring. At the same time, in the hallway a black sphere appears and begins rolling down the hall.

In that Zanvard and Dire are in two crossbow turrets appear and start shooting at them. The crossbow keeps missing Zanvard, as his armor is far too strong for measly arrows. Dire moves out of the room into the hallway to get a better look at the dragon. Nothing appears amiss in the room that Kiera is in and she also moves out into the hallway. Ulmo and Derp have nothing odd in their room either, as Ulmo moves outside he steps on a skeleton, and the skeleton immediately moves and grabs him, doing damage. In Aelar’s room the statues come to life and push him out of the room, into the hallway with the sphere. He immediately moves back into the room, to again be pushed outside.

As Dire has moved into the hallway the sphere hurls towards him and rolls over him, doing a shocking amount of damage. The others are rather scared as they see Dire be beaten by the sphere to near bloodied. At this point the Dragon also flies out into the hallway where Dire is, and tries to take a swing at him. And misses.

“Ha! Get rekt, dragon!” Dire says, brave enough to laugh at a dragon to its face.

The dragon does not seem phased as it keeps flying through the halls. Kiera moves out to get in shooting range of the dragon. Aelar also moves into the room with the well getting out of the path of the sphere, but leaving force shards in its path.

The dragon keeps attacking everyone. Ulmo stays out of range of the battle having taken quite a bit of damage at this point. But he does notice that the doors near him keep opening slightly more every round. The party quickly realizes that the dragon does poison damage and they are near a pool of poison resist. Kiera and Jett are able to go into the room and drink from the pool and get back out easily. Zanvard and Dire go into the room from another direction. And the blue pool from earlier which seems to have done nothing attacks them. Zanvard and Dire are grabbed by the vortex that this pool contains.

The others continue fighting the dragon. The dragon seems to be missing a lot, and the party is feeling rather confident. Zanvard escapes the clutches of the vortex and moves out near his party to provide healing words so they can continue attacking the dragon. Ulmo moves near his party as he gets worried of what will come out of the doors as they continue to open.

Dire once again tries to escape and fails miserably. Outside Derp asks the party, “So we’re committed to dealing with this dragon, right?”

From the other room, Dire yells “No, I’m trying to deal with this blue!”

Derp has no idea what that means, and attacks the dragon.

Dire finally escape from the pool, but stays within range of it for some reason, so the pool almost immediately succeeds in pulling him back in.

The others have finally bloodied the dragon. Aelar has quite placing force shards for the sphere as it appears to not be hindering it in any way. The dragon finally falls, dead. The players are relieved that they dealt with that with minimal injuries. The doors are now fully open, having swung open during the battle. Then the party hears Dire splashing around in the other room still unable to escape from the pool.

They move into the room, to see Dire struggling with what they can only describe as a puddle. Some start laughing, unwilling to help him. Dire does an arcana check, as Dire had earlier determined that doing arcana on the rune inside the pool weakens it. But all Aelar learns is that he needs to be next to the pool for this to succeed.

Dire remembers that he can actually teleport by switching with a different player. And he switches with Jett. His companions tease him about the fact that he did not do that earlier.

Jett not being grabbed, walks out of the pool without any problems.

They take a short rest, and inspect the open doors. They can’t find anything harmful or determine what’s on the other side of the doors, and they step inside. They are surrounded by a mist that clouds their vision, until finally they arrive to a room with a leering idol depicting a howling minotaur warrior armed with a massive axe. There are cauldrons near the idol, there is a bubbling liquid inside that gives off a thick mist. At the far end of the room they see two humans in glowing runes, but they appear to be in a trance. There is a demon, and a gnoll with large wings. There are three demons in this room, and Maldrick who is attempting to complete a ritual.

Dire recognizes Maldrick as a warlock, and warns the other players not to get close to him. As the battle begins, the Barlgura in the room standing on the other side of cauldron, attempts to jump over the cauldron and crit fails, falling right into the bubbling liquid. The party realizes that the liquid does damage and decides that it probably isn’t the best idea to try and push it over.

Heeding Dire’s warning they all stay away from Maldrick and try to deal with the other monsters first. Eventually Zanvard is knocked unconscious and is levitating in the air. Dire decides that he wants to deal with Maldrick and leaves the rest of the party to deal with the other monsters.

Zanvard is stablized. And Aelar does a variety of attacks and deals a lot of damage to the enemies that are still alive. He also begins to move towards Maldrick after this.

Maldrick succeeds at a part of his ritual and one of the humans in the mist disappears. The other monsters being dead everyone focuses fire on Maldrick but its too late, he completes the ritual and the other human disappears. The room starts to collapse, parts of the ceiling start falling down and the walls burst open as large demons begin to creep into the room.

Kiera makes a perception check and notices a key around Maldrick’s neck. “The key! Get the key!” She shouts.

They continue to attack Maldrick in a hurry to get the key and get out of the now collapsing building. Aelar attempts to place a force shard in front of Maldrick to distract him as Aelar tries to levitate the key off of Maldrick’s neck. This fails and Maldrick keeps a better eye on the key. They finally kill Maldrick. Aelar levitates the key off the body and they run out of the room, scared of the evil that Maldrick just unleased.

At this point some of the party begins blaming Dire, as many of them were under the impression they were not able to get near Maldrick at all, not just after he used a specific spell.

The adventurers run through the hallway trying to dodge the falling pieces. Kiera perceives her surroundings, carefully running around the falling debris. Ulmo being small is also able to dodge things. Aelar uses his arcana to levitate pieces out of his way, or to place force shards and blow things out of his way.

They finally exit the dungeon. The adventurers start sealing up the entrance using the various skills they have. Trying to keep the evil in there. Zanvard prays to Bahamut, and they hear a voice boom down, “You guys owe me one.”